"I pass my time," said the figure, somewhat irrelevantly, "between this room, where I was killed and the 'Salle des Caryatides,' where I was married. On the whole I prefer this room."
"Are you—can you be—Henry the Fourth?" exclaimed Sylvia. "Oh! poor Henry the Fourth, I am so afraid of them coming to kill you again. Come, let us run quick to the old apple-woman, she will take care of you till we find grandmother."
She in turn held out her hand. The king took it and held it a moment in his, and a sad, very sad smile overspread his face.
"Alas!" he said, "I cannot leave the palace. I have no little grand-daughter like Mademoiselle. I am alone, always alone. Farewell, my little demoiselle. Les voilà qui viennent."
The last words he seemed to speak right into her ears, so clear and loud they sounded. Sylvia started—opened her eyes—no, there was no king to be seen, only the apple-woman, who had been gently shaking her awake, and who now stood pointing out to her a little group of four people hurrying towards them, of whom the foremost, hurrying the fastest of all, was a fair-haired little girl with a cream-coloured felt hat and feathers, who, sobbing, threw herself into Sylvia's arms, and hugged and hugged as if she never would let go.
"Oh, Sylvia, oh, my darling!" she cried. "I thought you were lost for always. Oh, I have been so frightened—oh, we have all been so frightened. I thought perhaps they had taken you away to one of the places where the tops of the beds come down, or to that other place on the river, the Morgue, where they drown people, only I didn't say so, not to frighten poor grandmother worse. Oh, grandmother dear, aren't you glad she's found?"
Sylvia was crying too by this time, and the old apple-woman was wiping her eyes with a corner of her apron. You may be sure grandmother gave her a present, I rather think it was of a five-franc piece, which was very extravagant of grandmother, wasn't it?
They had been of course hunting for Sylvia, as people always do for anything that is lost, from a little girl to a button-hook, before they find it, in every place but the right one. I think it was grandmother's bright idea at last to make their way to the entrance and wait there. There had been quite a commotion among the cocked-hats who had not seen Sylvia, only unfortunately they had not managed to communicate with the cocked-hats who had seen her, and they had shown the greatest zeal in trying to "match" the little girl in the cream-coloured hat, held out to them as a pattern by the brisk old lady in black, who spoke such beautiful French, that they "demanded themselves" seriously if the somewhat eccentric behaviour of the party could be explained, as all eccentricities should of course always be explained, by the fact of their being English! Aunty's distress had been great, and she had not "kept her head" as well as grandmother, whose energies had a happy knack of always rising to the occasion.
"What will Walter think of us," said aunty piteously, referring to the children's father, "if we begin by losing one of them?" And she unmercifully snubbed Ralph's not unreasonable suggestion of "detectives;" he had always heard the French police system was so excellent.
Ralph had been as unhappy as any of them, especially as grandmother had strenuously forbidden his attempting to mend matters by "threading his way in and out," and getting lost himself in the process. And yet when they were all comfortably at the hotel again, their troubles forgotten, and Sylvia had time to relate her remarkable dream, he teased her unmercifully the whole evening about her description of the personal appearance of Henry the Fourth. He was, according to Ralph, neither tall nor pale, and he certainly could not have had long thin hands, nor did people—kings, that is to say, at that date—wear lace ruffles or pointed shoes. Had Molly not known, for a fact, that all their lesson books were unget-at-ably packed up, she would certainly have suspected Ralph of a sly peep at Mrs. Markham, just on purpose "to set Sylvia down." But failing this weapon, her defence of Sylvia was, it must be confessed, somewhat illogical.